Michael Mandiberg » Digital Foundations

Speaking on Panel at Brooklyn College

admin — Mon, 18 Oct 2010 00:37:51 +0000

I am speaking on a CUNY Open Access Week panel on Open Access in the Arts, which includes lecture/presentations by Doug Geers, Nina Paley, and myself. There will be a full screening of Nina Paley’s Sita Sings the Blues to follow panel presentation.

My talk is entitled “Giving Things Away is Hard Work,” and covers my experience creating art & design work with Creative Commons licenses. The talk focuses on the specific strategies I have employed for enabling collaboration when working with non-code based work. If you can’t make it, an earlier (less complete) version of this talk is here.

Wednesday, October 20, 6-9pm @ the Brooklyn College Library, Woody Tanger Auditorium (Directions / Campus Map)

HOWTO CC in Instructable form

admin — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 13:01:05 +0000

HOWTO Negotiate a Creative Commons License: Ten Steps – More DIY How To Projects

After a recent conversation with an author that signed a contract and then realized she should have negotiated a Creative Commons license for it, I realized I should revive the HOWTO CC post as an instructable. Same content, new form. New community.

Original all-text-no-pictures version here

A CRUMB Interview on Open Source and Collaboration

admin — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 13:00:19 +0000

As I get ready to take part in the Transmediale/FLOSSmanuals book sprint for the “Collaborative Futures” book, I thought it was relevant to drop this blog post about an older interview about FLOSS and art.

A bit ago Dominic Smith of CRUMB interviewed me about my practice in relationship to Open Source and Free Culture. This interview is going to be included in a forthcoming 10 year anniversary book about CRUMB’s activities. Posting this slipped through the cracks, but you can find it here (along with a snippet below):

So there is ‘Open Source’ the Noun, and then there are 2 different versions of the verb ‘Open Source’, ‘to Open Source’. So you’re working on a project and you release it Open Source, that’s to Open Source a project. But the other version of to Open Source is a certain kind of reverse engineering, it’s kind of hostile or confrontational, and it’s to Open Source somebody else. I was open sourcing Sherrie Levine in a sense. So I think that a lot of my work comes from that appropriation and that’s a starting point.

The Best Workshop Description EVAR

admin — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 13:00:59 +0000

From Patrick Davison, for a workshop at the Quest To Learn charter school in NYC:

Talking to someone on the internet? Want to seem cool? Want to photoshop their head onto that of a celebrity? Well – the digital savvy know how to do that, but the REALLY digital savvy know that Photoshop’s not the only way. The world of digital image manipulation is too often seen as a one-horse race, but it doesn’t have to be that way. GIMP is the premiere, super-fantastic FREE SOFTWARE tool for photo retouching, digital image creation, and cover-for-the-CD-me-and-my-friends-made-in-my-basement making. Come get an introduction to both at once, learning the strengths and weaknesses of both as you make your Facebook photos look better, and your friends be more jealous of your skillz. With a “z.”

Eclectic Praise for Digital Foundations

Michael — Sun, 13 Dec 2009 19:52:31 +0000

Digital Foundations has received some eclectic and exciting praise. I have included some choice bits below, but my favorite are the numerous peers who have said more or less the same thing: “This is the book we have all been waiting for!”

This book is critically important for the arts. Far too few artists are sophisticated enough to be aware of the stealthily growing problem at hand: Corporate, cookie-cutter tools—and their manuals—that standardize and cramp creativity threaten to become the greatest shapers of late 20th & 21st century art, just as architecture’s greatest influence this past century has unfortunately been neither a renowned school of architecture, nor even a great architect, but the catalog of standardized options: door frames, windows, and other prefab parts, from which 99 percent of structures are now built. Artists will remain stuck with old patterns and limited options, unless we create viable open source alternatives and brilliant interventions like this book! John S. Johnson Chairman of the Pacific Foundation Founder of the Screenwriters Colony, The Filmmakers Collaborative and Eyebeam, Art + Technology center This is how I would describe the experience of reading Digital Foundations: I have learned to speak, say Swahili, because I’m hanging out with a lot of Somalians. It takes me a few years maybe, but by now I’m pretty good at it. Then I come across this book, “How to speak Swahili” that goes over all the basics. And I’m like, whoa I’m glad I don’t have to learn Swahili all over again, this shit looks confusing, but this book makes it look so easy! (big sigh of relief) Then I find some vocab I never even knew! That will come in handy… Xan Young architect, Aedas LA Xan Young, a friend and architect

Digital Foundations goes to reprints

admin — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 13:00:02 +0000

Celebrate Small Victories: Digital Foundations has run through its initial print run of 8000 copies, and gone into reprints. The publisher has reprinted a run of 4000 copies to meet demand. This semester it was adopted at over 100 colleges and universities; hopefully that number will steadily increase semester by semester. But for now, we celebrate reprints!

New Books in the works

Michael — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 05:21:14 +0000

xtine and I have been quietly working on two new books, one on Digital Imaging and Collage and the other on Web Design. You can see the works in progress on the Digital Foundations wiki

Design Educator – My New Favorite Blog

admin — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 04:38:24 +0000

My new favorite blog, from my long time favorite education collaborator. At Design Educator xtine burrough takes on design and education, with a focus on the role of art in design education, and vice versa. written by an artist teaching design. Full of great things to think about as an artist teaching design, and as a student learning design or art or art & design.

I asked xtine to write a post about bad email addresses. These are only slightly modified versions of some of my students current email addresses. I have modified them enough to preserve their anonymity, but preserve their character:

xxxrlf2k1xxx@aol.com

bellabambola967@aol.com

catseyez1984@aol.com

not coincidentally, the best ones are all aol.com accounts…

Dorkbot PDX talk: FAIL, WIN!, FTW?

admin — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 13:00:07 +0000

I gave a lecture on August 8th at Dorkbot PDX entitled FAIL, WIN!, FTW?. It is a summary of my recent work experimenting with open licensing on physical objects. I explore what has worked, and what hasn’t, and some of the lessons I have learned.

Marisa Olson also spoke; her lecture is here

Ping Report

admin — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 16:00:28 +0000

Digital Foundations has been given a glowing review on The Tech Static and has appeared on Google Books

My plugins got a historical shout out in Nicholas Knouf’s statement about his new plugin.

The Graffit Fail Video is making the rounds. Wooster Collective blogged it, and it has dispersed from there. My favorite is this post by the Denver Egotist, a blog *for* advertising agencies warning their peers “Take it as gospel: the next time you think about wheatpasting your slogan on a popular graffiti wall…don’t.” ASDLabs covered it, as did FACT

I just discovered this old Boing Boing post on the Bright Bike